GodReflection: Guardrails for Living
It was an Opel Kadett. The color was sort of a washed-out mustard color like someone had mixed a generous portion of white mayonnaise into yellow paint.
The purchase was finalized earlier in the week. About the only guardrail I put in place was to buy auto insurance just prior to leaving town.
With a generous portion of youthful lack of wisdom, seasoned by a week of little sleep from college studies, work, and late coffee sessions, my brother and I left after work one evening for the 500-mile drive to our favorite fishing spot in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
Twenty minutes from our long anticipated destination I went to sleep behind the wheel.
As I awoke I pushed hard on the brake pedal. It was too much too late as we slid through the gravel and over the embankment totaling both the Opel Kaddett and the fishing trip.
If only the state of Colorado had placed a guard rail on the curved gravel road.
If only I had placed guardrails on my own actions.
A worn out exhausted person should know better than to get into a car without sleep and attempt to drive all night. Nope, we tried to drive all night without guardrails in place.
It’s the time of year when I’ve worked my way through the letters of the aged Elder, the Apostle John.
As I read through 1 John I found myself impressed anew with its simplicity and practicality for my trip through life.
I quickly began to list numerous descriptions to catch its meaning and purpose.
I thought of insights to live by, insights that give life, how to walk, it’s not that complicated, or how should I live?
I also jotted down life in the Son, instructions for life, and a phrase that especially seemed descriptive of the letter was Life, Assemble with Care.
Finally, it hit me. John didn’t know it—as the first century lacked automobiles—but he was describing Guardrails for Living.
I think of John’s church context.
Over a half century had passed since Jesus’ resurrection. The church was still two hundred fifty years away from the first copy of a completed sixty-six book Bible and Fourteen hundred years away from Bible distribution made possible by printing with moveable type of the Gutenberg Bible in the 1460’s.
Believers followed Jesus with a faith dependent upon eyewitness accounts shared with them by the Apostle John and others who testified to the resurrected Lord.
Time passed. Influence by Greek culture Christ followers were infiltrated by false teachers who sold the goods to them that Jesus was only a teacher. Nothing more. If he was really God, then he could not have lived in a human body. The divine and the human don’t mix.
Therefore, they taught Jesus was not who he claimed to be.
Since the divine and human couldn’t mix life was composed of body separated from spirit. Spirit was holy and worshiped God. Body was human and could do whatever it pleased.
John declared the Greek thinking to be absolutely wrong.
The Greek thought was sending Jesus followers tumbling off of the trail of reality. So the old apostle writes to “My little children” of faith and shares Guardrails for Living that they could depend on to keep them safe in Jesus care.
I too want to assemble my life with care in order to live within the reality of the Holy.
As I read John’s letter over his shoulder, I begin to see that I need the very same Guardrails for Living.
Over the next several posts I want to claim a portion of his wisdom into my own action steps for my walk on God’s earth.
The good news is Jesus is who he claimed to be—God in the flesh. He still invites all to walk with him. Plus, he provides refreshing rest stops and cool water along the way.
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells
A GodReflection on Guardrails for Living.
Gary@Godreflection.org www.GodReflection.org
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